


Two Weeks

by Winnie_Chester



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Castiel Angst, Darkness, Episode: s11e01 Out of the Darkness Into the Fire, M/M, POV Castiel, POV First Person, Saving the World, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 20:10:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4974742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winnie_Chester/pseuds/Winnie_Chester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do you fix something like The Darkness?</p><p>Dean asks Castiel to save the world and Castiel does it, because they have no other choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Weeks

Dean figured it out only two weeks after I did. Which was impressive, given how significantly more wisdom and experience I had at my disposal. 

I’d hoped it would take longer. But he was the smartest man I’d ever known. I was lucky I’d had two weeks. 

We’d been failing. I’d been on both sides of many wars, but never had it been so grim. 

The Darkness was ruinous. How do you fight chaos itself? How do you fight what has always existed?

It was a freight train and maybe we could slow it down, but we didn't know how to stop it. 

Sam wrecked himself researching, and the more hopeless that looked the more he began turning himself into a machine, as though brawn could win this fight if brains couldn’t. Runs every morning, hours practicing with any weapon he could find in the bunker. Spellmaking, too, I think, in the last few weeks.

Dean tried to kill his way through it, and he tried to drink his way through that. Neither worked. He never laughed. And then, he started locking himself in his room for hours, thinking, working on a plan. 

It was strange, how they switched roles like that, in the end.

And then Dean figured it out. I knew he would. I knew it was inevitable. I probably could have sped it up—should, really. It was suffering, even if no one will ever know about it but me. I've sinned worse. 

But it was the last selfish thing I’d allow myself. If we’d learned anything, it was not to be selfish. I knew I’d do it—I knew I had no choice, not once he’d asked—so I gave myself a little time. If I could just have a little time to say goodbye, well, then I promised myself I could do it. A few extra weeks by his side, and—and I’d make it be enough. 

I’m unclear on if I knew that was impossible, even then. 

Some humans believe there are an infinite numbers of parallel universes. Some humans believe in fate and destiny. Dean Winchester believed in human choice. He also believed there was a solution to every problem just waiting to be found. In his soul, Dean Winchester was an optimist. It was one of the reasons it shined so brightly.

And so, Dean made a choice, and solved the problem. He figured out how we could finally save the world. He figured out that it was possible to put the darkness back. 

By then, our relationship had altered. When the world is coming to an end, a real end, your priorities change. I’d loved him for years at that point, even if I hadn’t always had the language. Even if I hadn’t always understood the depth of that word. I guess for a few of those, he’d loved me too. 

We didn’t talk about it. It wasn’t his style, and, really, we didn’t need to. If we’d talked, we’d have had to apologize, and we’d both realized all of that didn’t matter anymore. The world went to pieces, but I got to spend nights by his side. I finally had permission to put my hand on his chest and feel it rise and fall as he slept. I finally had permission to put my hands anywhere I pleased on him. 

It was the only thing that was good. It was the only thing that had been good in ages. 

It was why I’d let myself steal two weeks.

He didn’t exactly know everything he was asking of me, that was clear from the beginning, and I was glad for that. 

He’d told me about seeing Sam, in the future, in the white suite and the garden. That was his only clue, and I’d get to erase it. I didn’t even have to worry about that. 

I agreed as soon as the words were out of his mouth. I’d agreed two weeks ago, I just hadn’t told him yet. 

And so I kissed him, and then: Gone. There was no use talking about this, either. 

Like a Band-Aid, he’d say. 

I just didn’t want to have to say a real goodbye.

And then it is 2006, and I’m in the boiler-room in a hospital in Memphis, plunging my blade through a yellow eyed demon. John Winchester is dying, but he won’t go to hell—I killed Azazel before that-- and Dean Winchester is going to live. 

I appear in Dean’s room. I’m shocked by how young they both look. How strange is human aging? I couldn’t have imagined either of them like this. They carry themselves so differently. I’m very glad to see them. 

These two brothers had never seen me before. 

“Your father is dead,” I say and I sounds so formal, so cold—Dean used to make fun of me for this--“but we’ve killed your demon.” John caught him, and he died, and he deserves for his sons to think he is a hero for that. I don’t look at them. I don’t want to see the beginnings of what grief had once carved into their faces. I disappear. They will never know what I was.

No one takes Sam to Cold Oak. Dean never trades life for hell. No seals are broken, and no one has to be saved. No apocalypse. The darkness recedes. Just like Dean knew it would. 

In the end, it was such an obvious answer to the end of the world. I was lucky to have two weeks. 

The world is saved. 

I reappear in an abandoned barn, which has never been warded. It is a mistake. I go home to the bunker, empty--probably forever now—and sit on the bed in what has never been his room. It is worse than the barn, knowing that once I could but now I’ll never again kiss him in this place. I sit there for a year. I think about what only I will ever know I had, and lost. 

I could go find him, but in an infinite number of parallel universes, I know it is was only in the one the world ends that he could ever be mine. We’d bonded in battle. But I’ve saved him all the battles. 

I’m changed for having loved him so long and so fiercely, but he doesn’t even know my name. We are mismatched now, and only I have our history. 

I'm destroyed, but the world is safe.


End file.
